Lingam Puja NYC

A practice honoring the sacred dimension of male sexuality and desire. A circle of brothers intent on creating alternative community. A meditation on our oneness with the natural world. A container for faith, grief, hope, love, devotion, remembrance, aspiration, longing, and joy. A ritual for the healing of our selves and the healing of the planet.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

We gather once a month in a New York City park to call upon the
Divine by some few of countless names; to bear witness to one another's intentions
and prayers; to name into our circle those we hold in our hearts; to walk in
meditation and reverence around the Phallus that we affirm as wellspring of life's
longing for itself.

We have no doctrine, no theology. We follow many spiritual
paths. We have in common only the strong, flexible container of this simple but
powerful practice, and what we bring to it.

Our ritual is not explicitly sexual. We remain clothed. Thus
we assure that our circle offers sufficient space for the longings and needs of
every man who comes to the gathering. Thus we can continue to practice in a
public space where newcomers can find us by chance--or by Design.

Here you'll find a collection of images and texts, and
weblinks to further resources, to help you weave holiness around our embodied experience
as men. May you here find support, nourishment, and inspiration for your own journey. Please feel free to
suggest further resources for incorporation into this site.Please join us: for more information about our practice, and when and where we'll next meet, e-mail David Townsend: anchorholder@gmail.com.

"The penis is the exposed tip of the
heart, the wand of the soul."--James Broughton

Web Links to Further Practice

About Me

I’m a gay man committed to gay and bisexual men in our journey toward a bigger, freer, more joyful life. I’ve had long experience of the roadblocks that get thrown up along our path. I’ve had long experience of joy and pride in finding a way around them. I feel abiding gratitude, because I know I haven’t found my way around them on my own.
My experience tells me we’re all happiest when we live our lives with gratitude. And real gratitude, in turn, expresses itself in a passionate desire to give back.
My background includes degrees in religious studies, languages, and literature; over twenty-five years as a teacher; time spent at monasteries and retreat centers; a long creative practice in the visual and literary arts; a love of play and experimentation; an abiding fascination with how ritual works in various world cultures and religious traditions. I've served numerous times as an assistant at workshops and intensives offered by the Body Electric School and have taken its training as a Sacred Intimate.

Blog Archive

Visitors to Lingam Puja NYC

High Summer at Easton Mountain

Photograph by Sunfire

Wallace Stevens: From "Sunday Morning"

Supple and turbulent, a ring of menShall chant in orgy on a summer mornTheir boisterous devotion to the sun,Not as a god, but as a god might be,Naked among them, like a savage source.Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,Out of their blood, returning to the sky;And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,The windy lake wherein their lord delights,The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,That choir among themselves long afterward.They shall know well the heavenly fellowshipOf men that perish and of summer morn.And whence they came and whither they shall goThe dew upon their feet shall manifest.

Guardian Spirit

Photograph by Gerry Fortuna

India

Bhutan

Sanctification

Attribution Unknown

Wellspring

Heart of the Mystery

Photograph by Gerry Fortuna

Taking a Chance on the Elements

Planning to assemble for a group ritual under a tree in January in a New York City park is either a spiritual discipline in itself, or else it's just nuts.

So if you attend, you witness the men with you in the circle starting to shiver as you progress through the ritual together. Fingers get numb as you tie threads around each other's wrists. The camphor flame in a small brass burner keeps blowing out in the wind, until you all huddle in closer to protect it, while you remember those absent and name them into the circle.

It's not exactly surprising that men who've expressed an initial interest in joining the practice might decide to take a pass till more temperate months.

But the weather is also a teacher. You learn that we don't stand apart from Nature but abide within her. You learn that we're not in control. You learn that not being in control is a gift, because you can't experience wonder when all you're getting is the outcome you planned. You learn to practice humility, in its original sense, of staying low to the ground, close to the humus.

When the focus of the ritual is a meditation on sacred sexuality, we're reminded that what we've gathered to honor is part and parcel of a Cosmos that includes sun and moon, heat and cold, stars and sky, wind and rain, thunder and lightning, birds overhead, squirrels scrabbling among last year's leaves, now fallen and sere, seedpods dropping from the branches of a sycamore, soil underfoot, and the slow, dark life of sleeping roots.